Protecting fruit from birds

Up until this summer I’d always shared with the birds. Their pecking the first ripe apricots was like a beacon showing me it was time to start picking. I almost appreciated it. And then they ate some nectarines and we ate some nectarines; there was plenty of everything in the yard to go around.

Not this year. The pluots barely set any fruit. We couldn’t afford to share grapes with the birds (and then the ants that follow). I had to protect what little harvest there has been in this craziest of years. Throughout Southern California, it was a warm and dry winter followed by the hottest of summers.

Zero bird damage occurred on any of the covered apricots. Then I transferred them to some clusters of grapes, which came through July with no bird damage except to a few grapes at the top of one cluster because I hadn’t cinched the top completely.

Grape cluster in mesh bag for bird protection.

So after the grapes were all harvested, I put the bags on our nectarines. No bird damage.

But I didn’t have enough bags to cover my peaches at the same time. Rather than buy more, I experimented. I cut swatches of the fabric that had been stapled to the bottom of a box spring. It’s more gauzy and less like a tough tight-weaved net. In fact, it’s very similar to the fabric used as a row cover for vegetable crops. Maybe it will still work?

Guaze fabric to wrap fruit for bird protection.

Birds perch on a branch and peck at a fruit’s top or upper sides, I’d noticed, so I made sure to cover those areas completely, fastening the fabric onto the branch with a clothespin.

Wrap the peaches over the top and fasten at bottom.

This has worked, but not as well as the polyester mesh bags. Mysteriously, I’ve found a few peaches on the ground, pecked, and spoiling. I’m not sure how it has happened.

At least most of the crop has come through undamaged although the one downside is that the peaches don’t color up as well since they’re not receiving as much sunlight.

Bagging compared to other methods of protecting fruit from birds

Why don’t I just net whole trees? I can’t say for sure because I’ve never done it, but the reason I’ve never even tried it is because I’ve talked to a hundred people who say it’s annoying at best. It can be fairly effective (except for any outer fruit that is touching the net), but you’ve netted yourself out of the tree just as you’ve netted the birds out, and you also have to frequently adjust the net or else you get new branches growing into the netting.

Because of this, it’s recommended to build a structure to hold the net over the tree. See a photo of such a structure here. But that’s farther than I’m willing to go to protect fruit from birds.

And how about those reflective strips you can hang in the trees? Never tried them, but what I do know from other deterrent-type methods is that they are only briefly effective. One of the kinds of birds I’ve got pecking my fruit is the scrub jay. Scrub jays are smart. I can’t imagine them being deterred by a reflective strip for more than a day. But I don’t know for sure. Do you have different experience to share?

Downsides of bagging fruit for protection from birds

Before I bagged fruit this year I’d thought it would be discouragingly time-consuming. It wasn’t. But I keep my trees pruned short — to the height of my reach. For a big tree, I’d only bother bagging lower fruit.

I’d also thought that bags would be more costly. They aren’t cheap, to be sure. The Earthwise bags I’m using cost just over $1 each. Similar bags made specifically for protecting fruit from birds and insects are about the same price. See, for example, these Agfabric bags and these Mazu bags.

A couple things to keep in mind about cost, however, are that the polyester bags will last many years, and you don’t need one bag for each piece of fruit on your trees. Even a small plum tree may carry 50 plums, but all don’t need to be protected at once because all don’t ripen at once. Also, these bags are big enough that I’ve used one bag to cover up four nearby pluots.

One very positive result of my finding a convenient, surefire way to protect fruit from birds has been that I can again see the scrub jays and finches and mockingbirds less as enemies and more as garden teammates. They really can be.

Ever heard of The Great Sparrow Campaign? I only learned of it a week ago. It was Chairman Mao’s attempt to deal with the sparrows that liked to eat the grains that farmers grew in China. This was back in 1957, and the campaign was successful in a Pyrrhic way.

The Chinese killed an estimated billion sparrows. This led to crops being plagued by insects that those sparrows were no longer keeping in check: locusts, for one. Crop yields declined. Ultimately, tens of millions of people died of starvation during this and related campaigns of Mao’s during the era.

This is a reminder to me that the various plants and animals of our world are linked, and dealing with a pest by sharing a little or using barriers like these mesh bags is usually preferrable to trying to eliminate the pest on a grand scale because that might imbalance a relationship that you hadn’t been aware of or had underestimated in importance, only leading to the proliferation of another pest. It’s a connected and complex natural world out there.

9 Comments

Matt
on August 17, 2018 at 2:44 pm

I tried the mesh over my little tress. Was 100% not worth the trouble and I don’t think it saved a single fruit. The thin plastic mesh got caught on all the new little branches and then eventually new growth grew through the mesh making it nearly impossible to remove once fruit was gone. My only hope is that once my trees are mature and set loads of fruit I will not be so disappointed at sharing a few fruits with the birds.

Thank you so much for sharing that, Jennifer. I hadn’t known the name of that material as tulle, but that seems to be the ideal size of netting for the purpose of excluding birds. I just bought some and I’m going to experiment with using it to protect my late season apples (and maybe next year’s blueberries).

This is such a timely post Greg! Thank you! I bought some bags on Amazon and they came overnight! I covered all my nectaplums, peaches and plums. My problem want birds, it was Japanese Beetles. They were swarming the fruit! Now they are gone! Thank you!!

I used to think that I needed three times as much fruit on the tree as I could actually eat (some for me, some for the birds and bugs, and some to fall on the ground). I’m pretty sure I need to up that to four times as much as I need after seeing what the birds and bugs can do. As for the Japanese beetles; we’ve had the fewest this year of any year and I’m pretty certain it’s because our chickens free range our whole back yard and eat up all the grubs.

I’ve been wondering the same thing about chickens and green fruit beetles and other insect pests. We have very few of them, and I too suspect it’s because of the chickens’ roaming under the trees and eating grubs throughout the year.

My daughter sent me an assortment of mesh bags to use on my fruit. I have fig beetles that attack my tomatoes peaches and figs. I put a bag over some figs, but I did not seal it completely and they found a way in, so I had a bag of beetles. A little Sevin spray and they were history, but of course the figs were history also. I tried again, but the rats chewed a hole in the bag and stole the figs. The rats go crazy for the Cherimoyas too, so there was no sense in putting a mesh bag on them. Next year I’m going to try aluminum window screen in the size of the large fruit and see if the rats won’t bother with it, although I know they can chew through aluminum mesh. I have a couple of other ideas I’ll share after I try them. The bags keep out the bugs, but not the rats.